The document outlines the development of an automated solution using Selenium to streamline the insertion of web form data for quality assessment at the Sport Sciences School of Rio Maior. By automating these repetitive tasks, significant time savings were achieved, reducing data entry time from 19 hours to 90 minutes while also minimizing human errors. The project, supported by management and utilizing open source technologies, demonstrates the potential of browser automation in enhancing efficiency in academic settings.

1. Operationalization of a solution to automate web
forms insertions in the Office for Quality
Assessment of the Sport Sciences School of Rio
Maior
Pedro Sobreiro, Teresa Bento & Rita Santos-Rocha @ESDRM
Santarém, 06-02-2014

2. Agenda
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Why this project
Approach adopted for development
Components used
Examples
Results
Conclusions

3. Why this project?
• Lack of resources and the need of inserting
data in web forms of A3ES for all the teachers
and curricular units of the ESDRM;
• Lack of time to insert and rigid time stamp to
develop the tasks;
• Repetitive human tasks and prone to human
errors;
• Information related to curricular units and
teachers already inserted in databases;
A3ES - Agência de avaliação e acreditação do ensino superior

4. Why this project?
• Solution develop with support and positive
feedback of top management of ESDRM;
• The head of the Office for Quality Assessment
give the conditions for the solution
development and supported the initiative;
• The internal support and confidence was
fundamental for the development of the
solution and for commitment to get work
done;

5. Approach adopted
• No money to buy a solution leaded to the
adoption of open source solution and the
exclusion of other options;
• Initially was tested iMacros, a free solution for
basic features, but with the development of
the project was needed additional features;
• Selenium as open source became the only
option to develop the solution to automate;

6. Methods
• The solution was develop using Selenium as
an interface to Firefox Web Browser;
• Database adopted for warehousing the data
was H2 (Hibernate) interfaced using the driver
manager jdbc on the client side;
• The plug-ins used were: (1) selenium IDE
1.9.0; (2) selenium IDE: Java Formatters 1.9.0;

7. Browser Automation
• The automation was implemented using
several Firefox plug-ins as interface to the
application developed in Java:
• Selenium plug-ins: Selenium IDE 1.9.0 and
Selenium IDE Java Formatters;

8. Browser Automation
• Additionally were installed third part plug-ins to
facilitate the web pages analysis;
• The automation of the interaction was supported
with a mixed identification, using TAGS and ID’s;
• Firebug was used for monitoring in real time the
web page elements;
• Firepath for editing XPATH and CSS3 expressions,
facilitating the tests with web page elements;

9. Selenium components
• IDE interface for saving macros and testing the
initial interaction.
• IDE gives a ground base and facilitates the
development of the application to interact
with the web form;
• Webdriver gives access to the web browser as
remote control, and permits “driving” the
browser;

10. Selenium IDE
• The comands for automating have two basic
elements: command and target;
• Basic commands: open url; type;
verifyElementPresent; click; clickAndWait;
@driver.get(@base_url + "/si/iportal.php/auth/login/lang/pt/")
@driver.find_element(:id, "portal_username").clear
@driver.find_element(:id, "portal_username").send_keys "username"
@driver.find_element(:id, "portal_password").clear
@driver.find_element(:id, "portal_password").send_keys "password"
@driver.find_element(:id, "ext-gen23").click
# Terminou a autenticação
@driver.find_element(:id, "ext-gen531").click
@driver.find_element(:xpath, "//ul[@id='ext-gen571']/div/li[3]/div/img").click

11. WebDriver
• Simulate access to the browser as an end user;
• The development enviroment used:
• Programming IDE: IDEA Intellij
• JUnit to drive the tests and asserts during the
tests;
• Selenium WebDriver;

12. WebDriver main class

13. WebDriver sample code

14. Webdriver database access

15. Results
• Reduction of 90% of the estimated times for
inserting manually the data;
• 19 hours to inserting data non stop, reduced
to 90 minutes – was assumed times for
waiting for browser availability before sending
data;
• Reduction of error due to the elimination of
human insertions;

16. Conclusions
• Web browser automation solutions can help
reducing time in repetitive tasks by human
resources;
• Can be used automating other manual
insertions to web browsers;
• Reduce handovers and non value tasks,
releasing human resources to other areas;

17. References
• Selenium Project. (2012). Selenium Documentation.
Retrieved from
http://seleniumhq.org/docs/book/Selenium_Documentatio
n.pdf
• Burns, D. (2012). Selenium 2 Testing Tools Beginners Guide :
Learn to use Selenium testing tools from scratch.
Birmingham; Mumbai: Packt Publisihing Ltd
• Gundecha, U. (2012). Selenium Testing Tools Cookbook.
Birmingham: Packt Pub.
• Niemeyer, P. (2005). Learning Java (3rd ed.). Sebastopol, CA:
O’Reilly.
• Bauer, C., & King, G. (2006). Java Persistence with Hibernate
(Revised.). Manning Publications.